Battle for Breakfast (Excerpt #2)

We pull over and climb the steep path onto a hillside that offers a spectacular view of the entire valley. At six o’clock on a May morning, the Lamar Valley is blissfully quiet. Through our spotting scopes, we see camouflaged elk browsing the high ridges on the far side of the valley. Closer to hand, Soda Butte Creek meanders through this wide, flat basin with the rhythmic beat of a metronome set slow. Big, dark bison crop new-growth grass on the far bank, and sandhill cranes stand stock-still in the shallows, hunting. Only a meadowlark dares break the stillness with its flutish song.

More than two dozen “watchers” bundle thick against the cool morning air for the chance to see a grizzly bear or a wolf. We are part of an annual pilgrimage to the mecca of accessible American wilderness. People journey here, hundreds of them, from all over Canada and the United States to answer a deep-seated desire to connect with wildness. For many, it has become an obsession.

“We’ve been comin’ here, oh, 15-odd years now,” says one of the watchers, a 74-year-old retired rancher named Les Smith, pointing to his wife, Clare. “We’ve watched [some of Yellowstone’s] bears since they was cubs.”

Among us, too, are the filmmakers, journalists and writers that have come for the media tour – some from as far away as Los Angeles, some from such prestigious magazines as Time. Several well-known wildlife biologists are also here to act as our guides and expert witnesses as we muddle our way through the biology and politics of grizzly bear conservation.

A shout breaks the still morning air. One of the watchers has spotted wolves. Four members of the Druid Peak pack trot west along Soda Butte Creek before huddling around a dark shape 500 metres from our vantage point. They have found the bison carcass and all lean down to rip and tug at what I imagine is frozen flesh. They take turns lifting their heads to survey the valley, looking and smelling for anything that might usurp their caloric bonanza.

A few minutes later, another shout announces a grizzly sow and her three yearling cubs lumbering eastward toward the wolves. The sow is dark brown, her guard hairs tipped with the grey-gold that gives these bears their “grizzled” look. Her cubs are the size of domestic dogs. They are all hungry.

Behind me, the biologists banter back and forth like mill workers arguing about which team will win the Stanley Cup. On one side are the “risk takers,” who think the sow, only recently out of the den and famished after a foodless winter, might just challenge the wolves for the much-needed protein. On the other side are the “risk avoiders,” who conclude (rather emphatically, it seems to me, given the uncertain circumstances) that the sow’s concern for the safety of her cubs will lead her to forsake the opportunity to pilfer the prize from the much smaller wolves. One voice confidently says that as an organic whole, a healthy wolf pack sits firmly atop the food chain here. They have been known to attack, even kill, grizzly bears.

I am astonished to learn that anything but a high-powered rifle or a speeding vehicle could kill a grizzly bear. After all, grizzly bears did win out over sabre-toothed tigers and a whole horde of fierce competitors who vanished when humans showed up in North America about 11,000 years ago. In fact, grizzlies arrived 15,000 years before humans; their bad tempers and poker-faced bluff charges allowed them to thrive in a world full of giant short-faced bears, American lions and packs of dire wolves much larger than this one. Less confident in my predictions than the scientists, I keep my thoughts to myself and just sit, watch and listen. Grizzlies are nothing if not resilient, though, so with quiet confidence I know I side with the bears.

At first it seems the “risk avoiders” are right about the mother bear’s caution. The sow and her cubs pass within 15 metres of the wolf-covered carcass, but it does not appear as though she intends to challenge the wolves. The grizzly doesn’t even seem to look at them as she waddles by, though the black wolf, his head hung low, watches her with a vigilance reserved for the wise or the fearful.

“See?” boasts the confident voice behind me. “I told you. No way. It’s too risky.”

As the word “risky” trails off into the wind, the sow whirls around and charges the wolves with the speed and intensity of a middle linebacker blitzing an unprotected quarterback, her cubs following close behind her. When she reaches the dark mound of dead bison, the wolves scatter like leaves in the wind. She climbs atop the carcass and whirls this way and that to face them, each wolf taking a turn to dart in and nip at her or grab a cub. She whirls and whirls, the cubs plastering themselves to their mother’s gyrating haunch, hoping she can fend off the wolves.

After a few swats of her giant paws, the wolves relent. They are patient, if nothing else, and there is time. They hunker down in the long grass to watch the grizzly quartet tear bright red flesh from white bones. She has won the carcass, at least for now.